The most eagerly awaited tie of the FA Cup Third Round is Leeds United's trip to Manchester United, a renewal of what was once the hottest rivalry in English football. Memories, memories and for Leeds, who suffered a horrible decade following the promise of the early 2000s, it is a chance to dine at the top table.

The Guardian's Richard Williams finds Leeds supporters defiant and ambitious for the future:

"Ten years ago this weekend the fans could revel in their identity as Leeds United stood proudly at the top of the Premier League, looking down on Manchester United and facing the future with absolute confidence. But tomorrow, when Leeds travel to Old Trafford to meet their old rivals in the third round of the FA Cup, the two clubs will be separated by 42 places. While Manchester United once again hover just below the Premier League leaders, Leeds are to be found in League One, continuing their struggle to arrest 10 years of vertiginous decline.

Their fans, however, refuse to give up the fight. "We'll be taking 9,000 to Old Trafford," Simon Grayson, the club's seventh manager in a decade, said this week, "and it could have been 30,000. Leeds fans would say that the club is as big as Manchester United – and, in terms of the following we've got, I wouldn't disagree."

Even in League One – "Let's call it what it is, the third division," says David Gaertner, a spokesman for the official supporters' club, with proper Yorkshire realism – they attract crowds of top-tier dimensions to Elland Road, where 30,191 turned up for their last home match, against Hartlepool. The fans may mock themselves with a chant of "We're not famous any more" but they refuse to accept the change in status as anything other than temporary."

Hope is offered - in a qualified fashion.

"With an eight-point lead at the top of League One, they appear certainties for a promotion that would be an important stage on the journey back to the land in which they feel they belong. But, as Phillips says, no Leeds fan who sat through the defeat of Revie's glittering team by Second Division Sunderland in the 1973 FA Cup final or the savage play-off disappointments of more recent seasons would dream of using the word "certainty"."